We Rely On Your Support: This site is primarily supported by advertisements. Ads are what have allowed this site to be maintained for the past 13 years. We do our best to ensure only clean, relevant ads are shown, when any nasty ads are detected, we work to remove them ASAP. If you would like to view the site without ads while still supporting our work, please consider our ad-free Phoronix Premium. You can also consider a tip via PayPal.

The Lubuntu 16.04 desktop is using the GTK-based LXDE rather than LXQt, the new desktop written in Qt that merges the work of LXDE and Razor-qt. While LXQt has already seen some significant releases and is built atop Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5, it's not coming for Lubuntu 16.04.

Today's Lubuntu Xenial Alpha 1 release notes state, "LXQt is still in development, as such Xenial Xerus is GTK based." LXDE continues to be GTK2-based and is still under limited development.

If you want to easily try out LXQt, there are distributions like Mageia that are already shipping it. LXQt is also available for Arch Linux users. While not the default for Lubuntu or other Ubuntu derivatives, there are lxqt packages present in the Ubuntu Xenial archive for those wishing to install it after the fact.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

The mission at Phoronix since 2004 has centered around enriching the Linux hardware experience. In addition to supporting our site through advertisements, you can help by subscribing to Phoronix Premium. You can also use our Amazon.com or NewEgg.com shopping links when making online purchases or contribute to Phoronix through a PayPal tip.